Lottery jackpot for The Rothbury Estate!

I am absolutely buzzing about to announce that The Wildlife Trusts have been awarded £5 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund towards the purchase of The Rothbury Estate.

Read more here.

It has been a pleasure to work with The Wildlife Trusts and Northumberland Wildlife Trust to put this bid together. In some ways this has been one of the most challenging projects I have worked on – it was a huge amount of work in a very short timescale, with Christmas in the middle! But, mostly it has been a joy – the ambition behind this is inspirational and I have loved working with some incredible people to prepare robust bid documents that set out a vision for nature recovery in a farmed and accessible landscape.

Plus, this bid has been personal – it has been pretty special for me to be able to work on such a huge project pretty much on my doorstep. I hope I have been able to use my knowledge of the local area and rural communities to help shape plans for this project and to strengthen the lottery application. I feel really lucky that Rothbury is so close to home – it’s a landscape I already care about and it has been a privilege to meet so many people in the last few months who also have a special connection to this place.

There is still a long way to go to raise the full amount needed to purchase the Estate but I am delighted to have played a part in making this happen and I cannot wait to see the vision for Rothbury realised over the next few years.